Gen City Labs partnered with Delta Air Lines to create the Gateway to MSG, an immersive tunnel leading fans directly into Madison Square Garden. Instead of a simple walkway, visitors entered a digital tunnel filled with light, motion, and sound. As a result, a functional space became an exciting, shareable brand moment.
Technology Behind the Tunnel
The installation used LED screens and sound effects working in sync. As fans moved through the tunnel, custom motion graphics and branded content surrounded them. In addition, real-time data visualizations reinforced Delta’s connection to New York and its passengers. Because of these details, the experience felt alive rather than static.
Impact for Fans
The Gateway to MSG raised anticipation before guests even reached their seats. Visitors left the tunnel with higher energy, stronger brand recall, and a sense that Delta was part of their journey. Finally, the activation reinforced Delta’s long-standing partnership with Madison Square Garden. For another sports fan arrival experience, see our Golden State Warriors Fan Experience project.
FAQs
Q: What was the Delta Gateway to MSG? A: An immersive digital tunnel created by Gen City Labs that greeted fans with synchronized visuals and sound as they entered Madison Square Garden.
Q: Why did Delta create this experience? A: To highlight its strong ties to New York and give fans a memorable arrival on their way into MSG.
Q: What technologies powered the tunnel? A: LED displays, synchronized audio, and custom motion graphics designed specifically for the venue.
Credits
Gen City Labs implemented the UI Design and Technology Integration on this project. Front End Development by Gen City Labs and MMMLabs
Permanent installations can often be the most rewarding deployments to create. The entire system needs to be designed to run reliably and sustainably. Early on the system was described as being “widgets” on a screen that would hold helpful data. Eventually we moved to a system that scheduled Events that contain a set of curated templates, along with data sources to serve data to the front-end app. Working in 4K presented some difficulties early on especially with memory management on the GPU, but by relying mostly on images + clean anti-aliased text we were able to work through the issues. We intentionally avoided using pre-rendered videos as the production cost is quite high and we felt the content would feel stale. A media server exists on site to download all the latest assets and serve them to both wall computers. The wall is connected to two custom PCs, in the event one goes down- the other will immediately kick-in to keep the wall going. Early on it was clear that the text layouts would become complex and change often, OpenFrameworks by default has no visual editor – until we created our own. Our designers were able to layout content on the screen and export all the layout data to a 1080p version of the 4k screen. This increased the design layout process by allowing realtime feedback. Another test application created was used for showcasing the Animated SVG icons. Our designers were able to preview exactly how the animations would work in the app and adjust their strokes accordingly.
Technology
Front End Software: openFrameworks, C++
Server Side Software: CMS scheduler, Ruby, PHP, HTML
Screen: 3×3 55″ LCD video wall (3840 x 2160 pixels)
